Show FLOYD GIBBONS f club f adventurers N W 4 let hero conductor by FLOYD GIBBONS famous headline hunter IS STEP TEP up to the front of the car please and have correct fares ready we ve got a trolley car conductor with us today as guest of honor and we have to watch our street streetcar car manners especially do we with a conductor like richard mayock a man who has made quite a reputation for himself at this business of conducting trolleys for dick Is known the length and breadth of the district of columbia as the hero conductor of washington what the newspapers called dick mayock and with good reason too I 1 or in the mid lie ile of april 1923 he be earned that title of his earned it two or three times over D ck acks a car had just f dished a trip into town had turned at the treasury building and started back As the ear car left the treasury be h nd it ra n began to fall suddenly and in such volume that it looked to D ck as if everything on the streets would be washed away back B ick in the car the passengers wet e saying that it was a cloudburst and that s exactly what it was the streets of washington looked like canals and dicks trolley plowed an aim alm st unbroken stretch of water which sometimes came as high as the hubs of the wheels the terrors of flood in the nations capital the car reached the city limits at a called kenilworth junction turned into an underpass that ran beneath a railroad bridge and there it happened dick opened the door to look out and the sight he saw froze him still in t his tracks up ahead was a wall of water several feet filah rushing down into the underpass toward the front of the car more water was shooting from the manholes in great spouts six feet tall the th flood had already risen to the bottom step ot of the car and that great onrushing onn onri shing wall of water was still to come ahe wall of water hit the car with a sheek that shook it from end to end the pass passengers eners a about bout twenty fave five of them rose from their seats and began stam edin for the door conductor keeps cool coal in face of tragedy and right there was where dick mayock did some fast thinking lie ile looked out into that s virling flood and remembered that the river at this point wae was only a few hundred yards away anyone who got caught in that rush of water outside stood a good chance of be ng swept into the river and drowned he stood with his back to the door and told the passengers to get back in their feats seats they going to be drowned not while he was responsible for them those rhose passengers must have known dich dick meant business because they fell back and started climbing up on top of the seats the water was two feet high in the car now and rising steadily shrieks and sobs fill the air when the water got to be waist high says dick I 1 began to think that am own fl Q the dark muddy water kept on rising my time had bad come and I 1 m sure everyone else felt the same tor for we seemed hopelessly trapped ta tie e shrieks and the prayers of the women were vere pitiful I 1 had to do something and do it atilt kly so I 1 grabbed an umbrella broke all the 1 windows I on one sl ie le of the car and climbed up on the roof there I 1 pulled down the trolley pole to keep anyone from being electrocuted and lying flat on my stomach helped the passengers up t one at a time the dark muddy water kept on rising tt it was as within a couple of feet ot of the top of the car when dick thought he heard beard a moan coming from somewhere inside the passengers told him he d be washed away if he tried to go back into I 1 that car but dick went anyway worked bis his legs back in through a window while two men held onto his arms it if dick was a hero here was a heroine and the sight he saw when he got inside the car dick will never forget it if he lives to be a hundred there in that almost filled car was a woman oman dazedly clinging to a strap with one hand while she held a baby with the other trying to keep its head bead out of the water dick grabbed the baby floundered to the side of the car and passed it through a window to the men on top but when he turned back to help up the woman she had d sapp eared down into the muddy water that f lied the bottom of the car dick dived and found her pulled her to a window and thrust her out into the hands of those above then he cl abed to the root roof himself and aal spilled lied artificial respiration to the woman who had swallowed water and was half halt drowned the wasef kelt kept rising until it was flush with the car roof and then it stapled estopi ed lor 1 or two hours this strange little crew of castaways cast stayed on the roof and then the fire department came A fireman with a rope tied around his waist tried to swim out to the car the current was too swift for him though and he had to be pulled r back after two or three tries he managed to reach an electric light pole 12 feet from the car and the marooned I 1 as threw him an improvised line made of the trolley roi rol e and some knotted neckties after he got to them ladders were strung along the rope and soon the entire party was as on land again but boy what a shindig while it lasted I 1 O 0 service |